The term "Nerds" encompasses a very wide range of people and personalities. You'll find all types here, although politically it's a safe bet to say most Slashdotters lean towards liberalism--at least as it's applied to social issues. I'm no libertarian (-5.62, -5.33). As much as liberals and progressives would like to consider themselves compassionate and caring we're still humans, we still can't help but look at the car accident as we pass by. There's a morbid fascination with death that all humans have. It's a strange urge to take a peak at something you'll have to experience first hand in the end, and it scares us, but it also captivates us. I don't think there's anything wrong with commentating on someone's death; and Slashdot certainly didn't invent dark humor, nor is it the most extreme example of it to be found on the web. Not by a long shot. I've seen things you wouldn't believe.
We're not laughing at people we killed, they died by their own hands. Speculating on the ramifications their removal from the gene pool has on the larger society doesn't make them any more or less dead. I will grant you that my opinion would change if it was a loved one or a friend being talked about and laughed at. Isn't that the essence of comedy though? Something bad happens, to someone else. And It's not always your day to be merely a spectator.
"Gotten bigger" does not mean surpassed Windows, or grown at the same rate. You're trying to make the case that OSX and Ubuntu have increased more gracefully and in ways you prefer. Fine, I even agree with that. But Linux is more bloated now than it was in 2001. The only difference is there's so many distros you can find ones that are still lean. There's only a few versions of windows. Even vista's 8 versions are nothing compared to all the Linux variants.
Vista is not the new ME, it's the new XP.
And if you're going to drag out the DRM boogie man I want to hear specifics. Tell me how DRM is effecting me; I don't buy any TV shows, movies or music that have DRM (actually I don't buy any at all). Having the subsystems to support DRM != being forced to use it.
The thing that no one, here especially, wants to admit is that the problems with Vista are going to start disappearing real soon. Disappearing in the way the problems with XP have disappeared...you're still using Windows after all.
When you buy a new computer with Vista it's going to be so powerful that the bloat that's been added since XP (and this isn't a Microsoft problem, OSX and Ubuntu all have gotten bigger) wont be noticed, or even noticeable. You could make the argument that there's no reason a home user needs a dual core processor and two gigs of RAM but that's what is being sold. If the upcoming service pack does most of what MS claims it can do the differences between XP and Vista will be even further reduced. Hardware and software compatibility is a big problem, but it's one that MS has dealt with before. XP had the same issues. Eventually software got updated or replaced and it isn't a problem. It's the same cycle as last time. Machines get faster and software gets updated. The new MS OS goes through some growing pains but eventually becomes accepted. XP was too slow, no compelling reasons to upgrade, 2000 was good enough and faster. Now the lines are: Vista is too slow, there's no reasons to upgrade, XP is good enough.
If you remember back when XP was released it did suck compared to 2000. 2000 was the mature product. You want a fair comparison you'll need compare Vista now to XP 1 year after release. Or compare XP SP2 to Vista SP2, but since we can't look into the future we'll have to settle for the first option.
Religion is not a threat to scientific thought. Teaching impressionable children to believe what basically amounts to magic has no effect on their ability to think critically? Do you really believe that?
Catch much flack for the sig? Oh, not too much so far. It is new after all, give it some time;)
Although to be fair I did get a little too inflammatory towards the end. But hey, I'm not afraid of punching back if someone starts something. But then again it was my sig to begin with...call it a draw.
evolution does not require abandoning belief in God. But if you teach kids from an early enough age to view the world critically and scientifically and to think for themselves, one should lead to the other.
Do you really think that the public, that average people buying computers, that business and government agencies care who actually wrote the kernel? Hell, do you think they could even grasp the concept of what a kernel is? Now granted there would be a collective geek orgasm "gotcha!" moment on sites like slashdot et al but what we do here does not reach normal people, nor could most people even understand it if you attempted to explain the gravity and ramifications of such an event were it to happen. This would not be a PR problem for Microsoft. It has more to do with their own hubris than anything.
If they could get old hardware to work, if all the software still ran, if the computer still downloaded porn like always, I think the masses aren't going to notice they're now technically running a variant of Unix.
If no Democrat is able to be elected, I'd rather have ANY other Republican as President. A Ron Paul America would be very good for a small amount of people in the short term and completely disastrous for the rest of the country (You may know them as the poor and middle class). And in the long run, we'd have complete economic meltdown, environmental protection would the thrown to the wind, national defense would be gone, and even basic things like infrastructure and education would be either literally non-existent or economically out of reach for the average person--which amounts to the same thing. You'd have his "free market" capitalist anarchy to thank for all of that. Absent any form of government responsible to, and run by, THE PEOPLE the power vacuum would be filled by conglomerate corporations beholden only to the dollar, and their shareholders.
Luckily for America he has no chance of winning, or even being nominated. The man sure can raise money though, I'll give him that.
You can't compare real world problems with internet problems. Even at its worst, the internet can't kill and your actions online can't hurt other people. A dangerous car is a hazard to the driver as well as all other drivers that are sharing the roads. Lax restrictions work online because there are very little real world consequences that you can't control in other ways that aren't potentially harmful to free speech. It's the job of the owner of the computer to decide how and what to filter if there even needs to be any filtering at all.
It's enough for me to know that your philosophy has been rejected by nearly everyone in my country--and indeed the world. Do you even stop to consider why people like you have nearly no power today? It's not because the rest of the world is holding you down, "the man" isn't blocking your great ideas, the powerful establishment isn't afraid of you. No, it's much simpler than that. Nobody listens because it's obvious to everyone else that what you're saying is complete tripe. Although I must say, persistence is an admirable trait, but it helps when it's directed at something worthwhile.
Get over the fact that your definition of theft (taxes) isn't shared by the majority of the Democratic world. No one is going to ever take you or your philosophy seriously unless...actually you'll never be taken seriously. Libertarian ideas would be hilarious if they weren't being presented as things that could actually work. I say could because there exists no working example of a libertarian economy in all of human history. Libertarianism whores itself out to the darkest parts of humanity and cherry picks a set of ethics that makes that a perfectly acceptable way to live. Silly? You wish Libertarianism was merely silly. Try morally regressive, try economically ruinous, try evil.
As long as no laws were broken and they did not have a history of letting that behavior affect their performance, why would it matter? They might be really great at what they do, and that is all I would care about.
I don't have mod points but I'll agree with you here. With one caveat. The "free market" (can't exist btw, it's just a idealized concept) IS working how it's supposed to. There isn't really a demand for an open platform GPU and thus the market doesn't provide one. If there were enough people wanting one that a company could make money selling them then you could buy it. Capitalism does tend to screw the little guys who have niche or obscure needs, unless you can pay to get things custom designed and produced.
But it looks like AMD is finally going to start servicing that section of the market, I'm still skeptical but we'll see how things turn out.
Nope. Because I don't see them first of all, and if I did I'd never click anyway. I use adblock plus with an aggressive filter and no whitelist, along with Customizegoogle to remove all adsense and other google text ads such as those in search results. My screen, my choice what gets shown, and all ads are inherently intrusive. Some forms less than others, but they all require your attention to be diverted from what you're really trying to get done, wasting your time in the process.
Didn't we just have an article a few days ago about the next version of IE that's still in development passing the acid 2 test? That's about HTML and CSS standards right? Why would they be suing to get something that's already on the horizon anyway; wont the upcoming IE8 do everything they're asking? There will still be all those un-updated versions of IE out there that will remain none compliant with standards, but you can't mandate that people upgrade, and punishing MS retroactively for those copies that will never work with the new standards doesn't seem legal.
Take out all the HDDs before you send it in to be repaired. This is prudent even if you're not concerned with privacy (but you should be) to protect your data from the idiots at the repair center that might finish off their work with a complimentary format and reinstall. I've seen that happen before. I don't have much sympathy for people who tried and failed to hide their child porn, but as with most losses of privacy it has a small impact on guilty people (who will just find a way around it) and a huge impact on the rest of us.
The act of harvesting them, although quite violent even how it was presented, still shied away from showing too much. IIRC the screen distorted, hiding the most gruesome part of the act itself. No doubt this was self censorship to keep the game at M, which always saddens me; artists shouldn't be afraid of doing things that will offend, shock, or horrify. This is the price we pay for the business and artistic sides of gaming having to act coherently, usually at the expense of the latter. Still, the game did not suffer any great deal from this, and I really enjoyed playing it. The art direction was a refreshing change from the usual Sci-fi future or WWII backdrops, and they really nailed the aesthetics of the time period that was portrayed. I hesitate to call it revolutionary or ground breaking, but a game doesn't have to be either of those things to be fantastic. It doesn't make my number one pick of the year (that would probably go to Portal, or HL2 Ep2), but would doubtless be among my top 5, likely even my top 3.
Most of us don't like the current situation, and there's a growing movement to get it changed. I back a system much like what you have in Canada, and we're getting close to making it a reality.
Cuba, China, and a few others come to mind. I suppose you'd didn't out right call me a communist. Still, you should be above such petty attacks, and it just makes your side look weaker.
Why don't you list countries like Canada and Norway next time? Universal health care isn't some failed experiment. But I guess listing countries that completely disprove the libertarian thesis that Government doesn't work wont bring in many votes for the LP.
Ideally we wouldn't have to "force" anyone to do anything, unfortunately some selfish people think they have no responsibility to give back to the society that provided the foundation that allowed them to amass that "hard earned money" in the first place. Thankfully people like that are a minority in the US, and it's only getting better as time goes on. In the next decade Universal Health Care WILL happen, the insurance industry as we know it will be gone, and we'll finally catch up to the rest of world's progress.
We just have different ideas how this country should look then. It's my opinion (one shared by many) that health care is one of the natural human rights that everyone deserves, and that one of the responsibilities of modern society as a whole is to ensure equal access to it for everyone; you believe otherwise. That's a philosophical difference and we're simply in different camps.
Slashdot Mirror
The term "Nerds" encompasses a very wide range of people and personalities. You'll find all types here, although politically it's a safe bet to say most Slashdotters lean towards liberalism--at least as it's applied to social issues. I'm no libertarian (-5.62, -5.33). As much as liberals and progressives would like to consider themselves compassionate and caring we're still humans, we still can't help but look at the car accident as we pass by. There's a morbid fascination with death that all humans have. It's a strange urge to take a peak at something you'll have to experience first hand in the end, and it scares us, but it also captivates us. I don't think there's anything wrong with commentating on someone's death; and Slashdot certainly didn't invent dark humor, nor is it the most extreme example of it to be found on the web. Not by a long shot. I've seen things you wouldn't believe.
We're not laughing at people we killed, they died by their own hands. Speculating on the ramifications their removal from the gene pool has on the larger society doesn't make them any more or less dead. I will grant you that my opinion would change if it was a loved one or a friend being talked about and laughed at. Isn't that the essence of comedy though? Something bad happens, to someone else. And It's not always your day to be merely a spectator.
None of which disqualifies what I said.
"Gotten bigger" does not mean surpassed Windows, or grown at the same rate. You're trying to make the case that OSX and Ubuntu have increased more gracefully and in ways you prefer. Fine, I even agree with that. But Linux is more bloated now than it was in 2001. The only difference is there's so many distros you can find ones that are still lean. There's only a few versions of windows. Even vista's 8 versions are nothing compared to all the Linux variants.
Vista is not the new ME, it's the new XP.
And if you're going to drag out the DRM boogie man I want to hear specifics. Tell me how DRM is effecting me; I don't buy any TV shows, movies or music that have DRM (actually I don't buy any at all). Having the subsystems to support DRM != being forced to use it.
I'll stay home and get the torrent with the FLAC files.
That is, if any music Sony put out was even worth downloading.
Apple doesn't sell PCs.
The thing that no one, here especially, wants to admit is that the problems with Vista are going to start disappearing real soon. Disappearing in the way the problems with XP have disappeared...you're still using Windows after all.
When you buy a new computer with Vista it's going to be so powerful that the bloat that's been added since XP (and this isn't a Microsoft problem, OSX and Ubuntu all have gotten bigger) wont be noticed, or even noticeable. You could make the argument that there's no reason a home user needs a dual core processor and two gigs of RAM but that's what is being sold. If the upcoming service pack does most of what MS claims it can do the differences between XP and Vista will be even further reduced. Hardware and software compatibility is a big problem, but it's one that MS has dealt with before. XP had the same issues. Eventually software got updated or replaced and it isn't a problem. It's the same cycle as last time. Machines get faster and software gets updated. The new MS OS goes through some growing pains but eventually becomes accepted. XP was too slow, no compelling reasons to upgrade, 2000 was good enough and faster. Now the lines are: Vista is too slow, there's no reasons to upgrade, XP is good enough.
If you remember back when XP was released it did suck compared to 2000. 2000 was the mature product. You want a fair comparison you'll need compare Vista now to XP 1 year after release. Or compare XP SP2 to Vista SP2, but since we can't look into the future we'll have to settle for the first option.
Although to be fair I did get a little too inflammatory towards the end. But hey, I'm not afraid of punching back if someone starts something. But then again it was my sig to begin with...call it a draw.
Do you really think that the public, that average people buying computers, that business and government agencies care who actually wrote the kernel? Hell, do you think they could even grasp the concept of what a kernel is? Now granted there would be a collective geek orgasm "gotcha!" moment on sites like slashdot et al but what we do here does not reach normal people, nor could most people even understand it if you attempted to explain the gravity and ramifications of such an event were it to happen. This would not be a PR problem for Microsoft. It has more to do with their own hubris than anything.
If they could get old hardware to work, if all the software still ran, if the computer still downloaded porn like always, I think the masses aren't going to notice they're now technically running a variant of Unix.
If no Democrat is able to be elected, I'd rather have ANY other Republican as President. A Ron Paul America would be very good for a small amount of people in the short term and completely disastrous for the rest of the country (You may know them as the poor and middle class). And in the long run, we'd have complete economic meltdown, environmental protection would the thrown to the wind, national defense would be gone, and even basic things like infrastructure and education would be either literally non-existent or economically out of reach for the average person--which amounts to the same thing. You'd have his "free market" capitalist anarchy to thank for all of that. Absent any form of government responsible to, and run by, THE PEOPLE the power vacuum would be filled by conglomerate corporations beholden only to the dollar, and their shareholders.
Luckily for America he has no chance of winning, or even being nominated. The man sure can raise money though, I'll give him that.
Are you just quoting Libertarian maxims now?
You can't compare real world problems with internet problems. Even at its worst, the internet can't kill and your actions online can't hurt other people. A dangerous car is a hazard to the driver as well as all other drivers that are sharing the roads. Lax restrictions work online because there are very little real world consequences that you can't control in other ways that aren't potentially harmful to free speech. It's the job of the owner of the computer to decide how and what to filter if there even needs to be any filtering at all.
The difference is that a government mandating THAT you need to have a filter is dangerously close to mandating WHAT needs to be filtered.
It's enough for me to know that your philosophy has been rejected by nearly everyone in my country--and indeed the world. Do you even stop to consider why people like you have nearly no power today? It's not because the rest of the world is holding you down, "the man" isn't blocking your great ideas, the powerful establishment isn't afraid of you. No, it's much simpler than that. Nobody listens because it's obvious to everyone else that what you're saying is complete tripe. Although I must say, persistence is an admirable trait, but it helps when it's directed at something worthwhile.
Best wishes.
Get over the fact that your definition of theft (taxes) isn't shared by the majority of the Democratic world. No one is going to ever take you or your philosophy seriously unless...actually you'll never be taken seriously. Libertarian ideas would be hilarious if they weren't being presented as things that could actually work. I say could because there exists no working example of a libertarian economy in all of human history. Libertarianism whores itself out to the darkest parts of humanity and cherry picks a set of ethics that makes that a perfectly acceptable way to live. Silly? You wish Libertarianism was merely silly. Try morally regressive, try economically ruinous, try evil .
As long as no laws were broken and they did not have a history of letting that behavior affect their performance, why would it matter? They might be really great at what they do, and that is all I would care about.
I don't have mod points but I'll agree with you here. With one caveat. The "free market" (can't exist btw, it's just a idealized concept) IS working how it's supposed to. There isn't really a demand for an open platform GPU and thus the market doesn't provide one. If there were enough people wanting one that a company could make money selling them then you could buy it. Capitalism does tend to screw the little guys who have niche or obscure needs, unless you can pay to get things custom designed and produced.
But it looks like AMD is finally going to start servicing that section of the market, I'm still skeptical but we'll see how things turn out.
Nope. Because I don't see them first of all, and if I did I'd never click anyway. I use adblock plus with an aggressive filter and no whitelist, along with Customizegoogle to remove all adsense and other google text ads such as those in search results. My screen, my choice what gets shown, and all ads are inherently intrusive. Some forms less than others, but they all require your attention to be diverted from what you're really trying to get done, wasting your time in the process.
Didn't we just have an article a few days ago about the next version of IE that's still in development passing the acid 2 test? That's about HTML and CSS standards right? Why would they be suing to get something that's already on the horizon anyway; wont the upcoming IE8 do everything they're asking? There will still be all those un-updated versions of IE out there that will remain none compliant with standards, but you can't mandate that people upgrade, and punishing MS retroactively for those copies that will never work with the new standards doesn't seem legal.
Take out all the HDDs before you send it in to be repaired. This is prudent even if you're not concerned with privacy (but you should be) to protect your data from the idiots at the repair center that might finish off their work with a complimentary format and reinstall. I've seen that happen before. I don't have much sympathy for people who tried and failed to hide their child porn, but as with most losses of privacy it has a small impact on guilty people (who will just find a way around it) and a huge impact on the rest of us.
The act of harvesting them, although quite violent even how it was presented, still shied away from showing too much. IIRC the screen distorted, hiding the most gruesome part of the act itself. No doubt this was self censorship to keep the game at M, which always saddens me; artists shouldn't be afraid of doing things that will offend, shock, or horrify. This is the price we pay for the business and artistic sides of gaming having to act coherently, usually at the expense of the latter. Still, the game did not suffer any great deal from this, and I really enjoyed playing it. The art direction was a refreshing change from the usual Sci-fi future or WWII backdrops, and they really nailed the aesthetics of the time period that was portrayed. I hesitate to call it revolutionary or ground breaking, but a game doesn't have to be either of those things to be fantastic. It doesn't make my number one pick of the year (that would probably go to Portal, or HL2 Ep2), but would doubtless be among my top 5, likely even my top 3.
Most of us don't like the current situation, and there's a growing movement to get it changed. I back a system much like what you have in Canada, and we're getting close to making it a reality.
Why don't you list countries like Canada and Norway next time? Universal health care isn't some failed experiment. But I guess listing countries that completely disprove the libertarian thesis that Government doesn't work wont bring in many votes for the LP.
Ideally we wouldn't have to "force" anyone to do anything, unfortunately some selfish people think they have no responsibility to give back to the society that provided the foundation that allowed them to amass that "hard earned money" in the first place. Thankfully people like that are a minority in the US, and it's only getting better as time goes on. In the next decade Universal Health Care WILL happen, the insurance industry as we know it will be gone, and we'll finally catch up to the rest of world's progress.
Ok.
We just have different ideas how this country should look then. It's my opinion (one shared by many) that health care is one of the natural human rights that everyone deserves, and that one of the responsibilities of modern society as a whole is to ensure equal access to it for everyone; you believe otherwise. That's a philosophical difference and we're simply in different camps.